A new year welcomes a new IDSA Ambassador—Covestro. Dubbed by its CEO Patrick Thomas as a “one-year startup with a 60-year history”—Covestro, since September 2015, has carried on the tradition of Bayer MaterialScience with global headquarters in Germany and US headquarters in Pittsburgh, PA.
Covestro is one of the leading producers of high-performance polymers in North America—manufacturing high-tech materials and developing innovative solutions for products used in many areas of daily life. The main segments served are: automotive; electrical and electronics; construction; medical; and sports and leisure. The Covestro group has 30 production sites around the globe and employs about 15,800 people.
Covestro has a tremendous focus on ensuring its actions are sustainable. EcoVadis has ranked Covestro with a “Gold” rating—in the top two percent of the 20,000 EcoVadis ratings. “The pinnacle of our sustainability efforts could easily be associated with Solar Impulse and the solar-powered plane’s record-breaking flight around the globe without using a drop of fuel; however, we feel even more proud of being able to turn CO2 into a raw material for polymers and starting a production facility which began to ship this material in late 2016,” says John Skabardonis, PhD, A/IDSA, design advocate for Covestro’s North American organization who has been an IDSA affiliate member for 15 years and written on Sustainability by Design for IDSA’s INNOVATION magazine.
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IDSA Ambassadors support the industrial design profession with a primary focus on research, thought leadership and advocacy, and share INsights. Founded in 1965, IDSA is one of the oldest and largest membership associations for industrial design professionals with thousands of members around the world. To learn more, visit IDSA.org, and connect via @IDSA on Twitter; Industrial Designers Society of America on LinkedIn and Facebook; and @IDSAdesign on Instagram.
Covestro didn’t have to look far when it came to giving some of its sites a vibrant new look recently. As shown in the photo, it used Covestro polycarbonate sheet for bold, new signage at several company locations, including the North American headquarters in Pittsburgh.